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HTC Desire Rooted!!! Expect public release 28 April

Paul O’Brien, widely known for his work on Android phones and the Modaco custom ROMs for numerous Android phones has just posted up a screenshot showing the HTC Desire with root permissions. He later tweeted saying that if all goes well the root method will be made available to the public from tomorrow (28 April 2010).

Here’s a screenshot showing the SuperUser application, and he also posted saying that this app as well the su file (essentially what makes the Desire rooted) have been successfully written to the system partition.

What does rooting actually mean? Rooting is called that because it gives you “root” permissions, which is like administrator access to the entire Android operating system that your Desire is running. With it you can:

Run additional applications such as screenshot apps, Titanium Backup (a brilliant way to backup applications AND their settings), put WaveSecure on the system partition (which is safer than installing it as a normal app)

Install a custom recovery image, which gives you extra options like a full backup of your phone (nandroid), formatting sd card and flashing custom ROM files

Install applications to the SDCard using a2sd

Custom ROM files are unofficial firmware created by the massive Android community developers. Each ROM is normally unique and can feature additional applications, tweaks and even bug fixes that isn’t on the stock HTC firmware. You’ll probably find ROMs that can remove HTC Sense altogether, ones which are based on the public Android source code and ones which features all kinds of tweaks and fixes. The possibilities are pretty-much unlimited.

Please remember that rooting will void your warranty with HTC, Paul hasn’t yet mentioned if it’s possible to restore the warranty by reflashing the stock HTC firmware (as was possible on the HTC Hero).